Burdens
by onekisstotakewithmex
Summary: Three agents went to Paraguay. One came back. And the team carried within them, the burdens that came with losing two team members, not knowing if they were dead or alive. Set between and around "Rendezvous" and "House Divided", season 14/15 spoilers, McLilah/McDee, Team as Family


A plane had taken three NCIS special agents on a highly dangerous mission to Paraguay.

One was a rogue recently returned to field work.

One was a former sniper with a set of rules.

One was going to be a father.

And when the mission ended in disaster, only one came back.

Somewhere in the heat and danger of Paraguay, somewhere in the jungles were two NCIS special agents. Whether they were dead or alive was unknown.

Their unknown fate weighed heavily on the remaining team members. Whether they'd known the agents for one year or many, not knowing whether or not they still lived was torture for those left behind, as though they had been robbed in the dead of night, and priceless artifacts had been taken from them.

It was futile, to hope they were even still alive. The hope itself was its own form of pain, because as long as there was even a chance of them being alive, no matter how slight, the search continued. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, if the haystack was slowly being burned. Every day the danger grew, and the chances that the two wayward agents were still alive grew slimmer.

And still the tiny flame of hope that each team member carried, burned within. The burden of not knowing wore them down, slowing killing them by degrees.

It was rarely acknowledged that they were carrying the burden, but occasionally they carried it together.

 **XNCISX**

If Special Agent Nick Torres had been told a year ago that he was now a team player, that he would hold a gun to a pilot's head to try and save his team members, he would have scoffed. Laughed even.

Nick Torres was not a team player.

And yet, every day, with the knowledge that he had abandoned his team mates, he showed up to work, and every day like clockwork, he would make his way to another location after work. Every day, he would stop by the apartment.

Delilah Fielding McGee would open the door, only to find Nick there, her eyes blazing with the hope that they had found something. And every day, he would hate himself for shaking his head, and dousing the flame that burned within her.

She would invite him in, he would stay for dinner, and they would talk, eventually lapsing into silence. It was killing him that he'd left them behind. Every day, he would look at her, and think _how could I let him leave her?_ All of his efforts to keep McGee alive had gone to waste, and though neither of them ever said it, they both knew that Timothy Farragut McGee could be long since dead, lying far from home in a jungle while his child grew inside his wife.

Nick Torres was not a team player, and he'd once considered it a mistake to care for team mates that could die at any time. It was easier to get attached. As he stared at Delilah, knowing that there was a chance that Tim might never meet his child, and knowing that Tim had loved her so very much, he knew that it had not been a mistake to get attached.

Who could have seen what happened in Paraguay coming? Who could have expected that Tim would throw himself into danger so willingly? And Nick tortured himself every day with the question _could I have stopped him?_

Delilah said it one day, tired from a long day at work, still pale from the return of her morning sickness – Nick knew it was back because he'd held back her hair on more than one occasion, fighting his own disgust that he should not have been there, it should have been Tim – and no longer the glowing newlywed of late May. "Everyone is treating me like he's already dead," she said softly.

"He's not-," Nick tried, because in his heart of hearts he knew that Tim wasn't dead. He couldn't let himself believe that Tim was gone and dead.

"Nick," she said, and she gave him a look, one that he read all too well. He shut up. "People were congratulating me on the wedding and then expressing condolences in the same breath. And I hate that he's gone, when he should be here."

"Delilah, it's… it's my fault. I shoulda stopped him from jumping off that helicopter-,"

"Stop right there, Nick. It's _not_ your fault. It's not even Tim's fault, and he's the one I should be mad at. He _is_ the one I'm mad at. But at the same time, I will gladly forgive it the second he walks through the door."

"You mean you won't be mad anymore?" Nick asked, surprised.

She looked him dead in the eye. "Oh I'll be mad. But I'll also be grateful, because it means… that he's not dead. And that he can meet this baby. Stupid Tim and his stupid need to be a hero." She smiled wryly at Nick. "Don't ever fall in love."

"Uh…" He flashed a quick smile. "Don't worry, Delilah. We're workin' as hard as we can to bring them home."

"I know."

He felt distinctly as though he was robbing Tim of something priceless and irreplaceable by spending time with Delilah while he was off dying in a foreign country. It wasn't his place to complete the domestic tableau, had never been his place. Home was a privilege. It was Tim's privilege, how could he have thrown it away? Just watching Delilah's face and seeing how much Tim's absence weighed on _her_ gnawed at him.

And every evening, when he left, promising he would call the second he had an update, it would feel so helpless that the despair would nearly send him to his knees. If anyone should have jumped off that helicopter and endangered their life, it should have been him. He should have forced Tim to go home.

The guilt ate him alive, and how could it not when he relived those fatal few moments every waking minute of the day? When he looked at Delilah and saw her, a newlywed with a baby on the way and a possibly dead husband, how could it not?

It was his burden, and he deserved it. He deserved it because he had failed Tim, failed Delilah, and most of all, failed his newfound team and family.

 **XNCISX**

Eleanor Bishop, former NSA Agent, still considered herself a probie. Never mind that she was currently the acting leader of the MCRT; she would have traded it all away in a heartbeat to have Tim and Gibbs back at their desks, like nothing was wrong, Gibbs offering sharp words while Tim babbled about his pregnant wife.

She was not supposed to be the boss, and besides, it wasn't as if there was much of a team to be the boss of. But her job was finding Gibbs and Tim, and keeping the shattered team together, even though the sharp edges of the absent members cut into her daily.

She sifted through the evidence, regressed into her former, pre-divorce, pre-NCIS self, dragging Nick and Clay – her boys, whom she was so grateful for – into _floor time._ It wasn't quite a _grab your gear_ but it was a kick in the ass. They were still federal agents. They still had a job to do.

But how could she be the leader with Gibbs' empty desk next to hers like an accusation? With Tim's computer gathering dust no matter how many times she swept it off? It was like preserving a shrine, of a time when they were together.

The Director checked in daily.

Tony checked in daily, time differences be damned, and had offered at least once a week to rejoin the team, if only just to find McGee, his little brother and best friend. His phone calls were always anguished and left Ellie's nerves frayed.

Quinn, having gone on leave to deal with her mother, couldn't have picked a worse time, and even she checked in daily. Not even on the team for a year, she had considered the team an extension of family. The way they all did.

To Ellie, it was like going home for a visit and finding that things had been rearranged, a family member gone, an empty chair where there had once been a living, breathing, laughing person.

She had to remind herself daily that they could not be dead.

Not when she had lost so much (it was selfish and she knew it but she couldn't force herself to care anymore); first her marriage had dissolved, then Tony had left, and then Qasim had died… those had worn at her and cracked her resolve, but none quite so much as having her boss and her older brother left in limbo.

They weren't dead, they weren't alive; Paraguay was its own special form of Purgatory.

But worse than the chains of command, worse than the phone calls from Tony and Quinn, even worse than the daily meetings with the Director on how much progress they weren't making, and how two agents had disappeared into thin air, were the calls from Mrs. Delilah Fielding McGee.

Ellie could not begrudge her friend the quad-daily check-ins. The hope they all carried was fragile, and easily shattered. And Delilah, with her infinite resources, was going to bring her husband home even if she had to fly to Paraguay and do it herself. She'd threatened to do it at least three times already, and Ellie was finding it harder and harder to convince her otherwise. Underneath it all, Ellie understood, and that was the worst part.

She _understood_ and would've probably helped Delilah to hijack a plane to find them themselves, but she couldn't. _They_ couldn't. All they had was facts, and hope, however fragile.

As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, the hope that had once been strong had grown weaker with every passing day of _nothing new to report._ It had to be killing Delilah, but she rarely expressed any fear or anger or sadness around Ellie. It was as though Delilah refused to put that burden on her friend, when she already had so much to carry.

The two of them, so young, and already so many burdens between the two of them. Would they be heavier if shared, or lighter?

All Ellie knew was that she was the boss; it was her job to make sure that Tim's baby would meet their father. It was her job as the boss to keep the hope alive, to not let the team see her cracked composure. She could (and did) cry at home, already mourning when she knew she shouldn't. It was not the Bishop that the team saw.

Her weakness was her burden to carry, that and the knowledge that even if she wasn't the most experienced person for the job of leader, she had to keep the team together, and she _had_ to bring them home.

Or she'd have failed at her job. The chains of command were heavy, but she wore them like a crown, because maybe with her misguided guidance, Tim and Gibbs could come home.

 **XNCISX**

Abigail Sciuto believed in a lot of things. She believed in prayer, miracles, science and Gibbs' gut in equal measures.

Most importantly, she believed that Tim and Gibbs weren't dead.

They _couldn't_ be dead.

Not after everything they'd been through together, the dysfunctional family unit that had become her home.

They had been the family unit that had bonded so closely after every tragedy, and they'd been rocked by the waves of disaster, but they had always come back to one another.

After Kate.

And Mike, and Cassidy, and Dorneget.

The Navy Yard bombing.

Ziva's death and Tony leaving.

She'd had Gibbs and McGee, her two constants, her men. Her father and her best friend, the ones she turned to for whatever she needed.

Nick and Clay and Ellie had some idea of the history between Abby and her boys, but not the _real_ history; the darkest days had happened, and Abby had lived through them- some by the grace of God, but others by the grace of having Gibbs and McGee there for her.

She'd learned that agents came and went, but they were constant, never-changing. She hated change, and for good reason; usually change meant death of some kind.

Gibbs and McGee had to be alive. Any day now, McGee would walk in through the door to her lab, with an idea for Delilah's baby shower (she would let him attend if only he would walk through the door). Or Gibbs would walk in, needing evidence and bearing a Caf-Pow!

The loyalty that Gibbs had instilled in his team was boundless, and without limits, and he inspired a kind of loyalty that made agents throw themselves into danger. It was a kind of loyalty that Abby herself possessed. But at the same time, she hated Gibbs for it, because Tim threw himself off the helicopter for Gibbs, and she hated Tim for being so loyal to Gibbs that he would blindly follow him into danger.

That kind of thinking was dangerous, but Abby's fear was as limitless as her loyalty. She couldn't face that the two constants were no more; the thought of them being dead tore away at her, leaving her just as vulnerable.

She was still Abby Sciuto. She was there to help Ellie be the leader, to help Nick with his guilt, to support Delilah in her weaker moments. She prayed, and hoped for a miracle, because as time passed, it seemed as though it would take a miracle to bring them home.

And the fear kept on eating at her.

 **XNCISX**

Dr. Donald Mallard had hovered on the edge of retirement more than once in the past few years. And it always happened when a friend ended up on his table. At first, he'd approached it with a stiff upper lip, reminding himself that his friends were federal agents, and there was always a chance that they would leave, and never return.

He gave them their dignity in death, and praised their heroics, and allowed himself to grieve in private for those lost.

And yet the thought of cutting open Timothy – who he admittedly still saw as a fresh-faced young man some days – or heaven forbid, Jethro, who had always seemed so unshakeable, was enough to make him wish to retire permanently.

But the bodies still came in, and the team still needed him. So Ducky stayed.

But the horrors that he had seen in his long career chased him into the office every day, made their way into his brain to whisper terrible reminders in his ear, that wherever Timothy and Jethro were, they were most likely in pain.

His knowledge was what made it harder. He knew all too well the horrors that human beings inflicted upon one another for the simplest of reasons, but thinking of that being done to his friends, was appalling and made him, a seasoned veteran of horror, flinch.

It took a lot to make Ducky flinch anymore. But _this_ was a stark reminder of all the voices in his mind that he could dull to whispers when working. The reminders that no agent, however much his friend, was immortal.

This was not something he could wipe away with a story. The dead spoke to him, and for once, thinking of Timothy and Jethro, he did not want to hear what they had to say.

Not when he had walked Timothy's bride down the aisle at their wedding. Not when he had been Jethro's friend for so long that they understood each other better than anyone else. And most certainly not when there was a chance that they were not alive.

He could not mourn them, because they were not dead, but the hunt was futile, spread out over so much territory, and as the days passed, Ducky knew the chances of finding them at all – never mind alive – grew smaller.

The chances grew smaller as Timothy's child, unaware of the horrors of the world, grew bigger.

And Ducky had no stories that could erase the horror of not knowing; no amount of haphazard babbling could cure the fact that he knew too much. He knew all of the ways humans could kill each other, and that knowledge was killing his hope.

So he prayed, and told his stories to corpses, and hoped that they would find Timothy and Jethro, alive and safe, because he would not be able to live with himself if he were to gain extensive knowledge of them… on his autopsy table.

 **XNCISX**

The burden was most certainly shared among the rest of the team, and there was always the delicate balance of hope and despair that plagued their waking hours, reminding them all of how futile it was to hope, but how it wasn't fair to give up on their friends.

Clayton Reeves, MI6, had a dark history, and Ellie was one of his closest friends, so watching her work herself to death to find Gibbs and McGee left him with an ache in his chest that he could never quite place. He cursed himself for not getting to know Gibbs and McGee as well as he could. He'd assumed that they were Ellie's family, not his, when of course the truth was that they were a family as a team. He'd been to McGee's wedding. He'd worked closely with the team on so many cases, and of course it was his job to find them. Family did what they had to, didn't they? He'd found his family, he only hoped it wasn't too late.

Director Leon Vance fielded questions daily, was the one dragged in front of hearings and committee, and still had the agency to run, without the additional burden of looking down into the bullpen, and not seeing Gibbs glaring back up at him, or not seeing McGee typing away frantically at his computer. He was the director of NCIS, and getting too close to any one team would do more harm than good, but he'd realized that too late, because he was fond of Gibbs' team, dysfunctional as it was. And there was the added hesitation, when he sat at his desk, still a family man, staring at the photos of his children and knowing what Delilah McGee had to be going through with the potential loss of her spouse, and worrying that McGee might never see his children grow up… it ate at him that he was the man in charge, but still helpless to save his men.

Dr. James Palmer had felt like the awkward tag-along kid brother whenever he'd interacted with the team, but he'd felt an odd kinship with DiNozzo, and later McGee. And every night when he'd gone home to his wife and daughter, he thought of how he'd been so blessed to see his wife at every stage of her pregnancy, and yet felt guilty over how McGee was missing it. He could do nothing to help the search, as a lowly medical examiner, nothing like what the agents on Gibbs' team did on a daily basis, but he could do _something_ , and that something was being there for Delilah. He'd been a new parent once, and while he didn't have a badge, he did have a heart. And thinking of McGee never meeting his child was making it break.

They carried their burdens, as one does for family, but the greatest burden didn't fall to the team.

 **XNCISX**

There were moments, first thing in the morning, when Delilah Fielding McGee could forget. Moments where her husband wasn't missing, presumed dead. Moments when she didn't have to be afraid, or mourn.

Her default emotion was fear, but a close second was anger.

It wasn't as though she didn't love her husband, but because she loved him so much. She realized suddenly what he must have felt like in the aftermath of the Conrad gala, not knowing whether she would live or die. Only here they were, situation reversed, and lifetimes later.

Her wedding ring weighed down her hand, but she clutched it like a lifeline every day, fearing that if she took it off, she would hear that Tim was gone, and she was alone. So she wore it, and hoped.

She tormented herself every day, trying to remember what the last thing they'd talked about was. It had been on the satellite phone, while he was in Paraguay, and it was the last contact they'd had. Maybe the last time she'd ever hear his voice. And what had they talked about?

Her morning sickness.

 _And what would she have said, had she known it was the last time?_ She would have told him she loved him. She was never sure if she said it enough, but knew at the same time that he _knew_ that she loved him.

Did he know how much she loved him, her Timothy, her husband? He had once been willing to let her go halfway around the world, even if it meant ending their relationship, so that she could have what she wanted. He'd fought for her, armed with little more than the love he carried for her. And he'd stayed up all night in a hospital – which he must have hated – wondering and worrying about her.

And now she was the worried one, wanting him to be there. She was using every resource she had, every contact she'd made in her years of counterterrorism work, pulling out all the stops if it meant bringing him home. And she buried herself in her work, trying to avoid the anguish and crashing hope that Tim would ever see her again.

She would have given up everything to stop the pain, to have him back home, in her arms. Alive and wonderfully whole.

The not knowing was killing her, but wasn't it what she signed up for? She had married a federal agent, a deathly loyal federal agent whose team was his family.

It would not make the folded flag handed to her at the funeral any easier.

She refused to believe he was dead. They had gone through so much to be together, fought through so many obstacles where others had faltered, so it couldn't end like this.

Not when she didn't remember if she'd told him she loved him before they'd hung up. She knew he'd said it, he _always_ said it. He'd even been the first one to say it, stammering it out after one of their all-night movie marathons, when they were both hazy with sleep and laughing over silly things; a serious truth in the middle of silly nothings. And what wouldn't she give away to bring him home to her, the laughing, silly man with a heart big enough for both of them and all their baggage.

Her Timothy, her husband.

She carried the burden of her love for him, knowing that it wasn't really a burden, because she'd carry it forever.

And yet it seemed like no matter how many contacts and resources she used, no matter how many times a day she called Ellie, it didn't seem to matter. Her husband was gone.

She'd eventually just gone right to the source, when she figured out that Ellie had a lead, and helped them in the lab, the dream team reunited for a darker purpose, but she hadn't been sure if it was just false hope sustaining her by then. She'd never accepted that her husband was dead.

And then, the knocking at the door that had come as a total surprise to her, and she was suddenly terrified, making her way to the door that night, that the team had found her husband's remains. But when she'd opened the door, and seen them there, Nick and Abby, both of them smiling like fools, her face broke into an answering smile.

And both of them knelt down, and pulled her into a hug, right in the doorway, telling her over and over again, laughing, that Tim was _alive,_ he was coming home to her, and she'd let herself cry in front of them, through her laughter, wrapped in the embrace of her friends.

And when he returned home, the very first thing she made sure to say was "I love you."

He had said it back.

The burden had lifted, and she knew she had him back. She'd never forget to tell him she loved him again. She'd always love him. His arms around her, she knew: they would be okay.


End file.
